Traffic Loss after Rank Math Plugin 301 Redirects - Support

Resolved Kate Van Druff
3 years, 4 months ago

Rank Math free

Hello,
I am concerned about my website after I used Rank Math to change the URL structure for my blog, ToddlerMealTips.com.

I removed the date format to use a cleaner, simpler post title format for short urls.

Since then I’ve lost most of my organic traffic and a big chunk of keywords for the pages that do still get traffic.

I am wondering if my site now has a url duplication error that would cause it to perform poorly in search?

In my Google Analytics reporting, I am seeing both urls with a slash at the end and those without for the same exact pages in my Google Analytics.

ex:
example.com/example
example.com/example/

Is there a fix for this? Is this bad for my website? Could it be the cause of my keyword ranking loss and traffic problems? Analytics never did this before until I installed and used Rank Math’s redirection tool. Thanks for any insights!

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

Michael Davis
3 years, 4 months ago

Rank Math pro

Hello,

Thank you for contacting Rank Math and sorry for any inconvenience that might have been caused due to that.

How have you redirected the URLs from your previous structure to the new structure ? Is your destination same as your current permalink structure ?

Are there any errors alerted on your Search Console? Please go through the following articles to try and diagnose the issue with the loss in traffic
https://neilpatel.com/blog/diagnosing-traffic-drops-using-google-analytics/
https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2018/07/13/organic-traffic-drops

Looking forward to helping you. Thank you.

Uzair
3 years, 4 months ago

Hello,

Thank you so much for getting in touch.

That is a big no-no. You should not change your permalink structure – ever. Even if you do, you should ALWAYS plan that and have redirects already in place when the change goes live.

Right now, all your indexed pages must be showing 404 and that is the reason for the drop.

Please create manual redirects from the old structure to the new one because Rank Math does not have an option to create redirects automatically when you make changes to permalinks.

Hope that helps.

Kate Van Druff
3 years, 4 months ago

Rank Math free

Hi and thanks – I did the redirects the same time I changed the URLs, within minutes of each other. So I don’t think that was the issue. I seemed to expreience some duplication with the trailing backslash as the redirection from the plugin overwrote the previous directive to redirect to the trailing backslash that was set up on the server. I don’t know if this is something we had an option to avoid, but thought it might be useful to pass along to you.

Kate Van Druff
3 years, 4 months ago

Rank Math free

Also I am finding from my host and the Robots.txt tester that my robots file is gone now too. My developer said that is as a result of Rank Math.

Kate Van Druff
3 years, 4 months ago

Rank Math free

Hi! Happy New Year. Thanks so much for your time and help. I think the traffic loss was due to duplication from having a trailing slash and also not having trailing slash – not sure how that happened. I had a developer do some redirects and I am hoping that helped with some of it. However, I still seem to have some errors caused by Rank Math.

I had my web host look into this for me.

“After checking the error_log file of your website, I see that there are some errors regarding your RankMath SEO plugin in WordPress. A screenshot of the last errors in the error_log – http://prntscr.com/wehxu0

The first one in regards to “RankMath” is from 29 Dec 2020 – http://prntscr.com/wei0pz ”

Thanks for any help!

Uzair
3 years, 4 months ago

Hello,

Are you using WP Rocket?

The first screenshot mentions WP Rocket with Rank Math so it is possible that you haven’t chosen Rank Math option from the WP Rocket settings.

The second screenshot is about missing tables.

Please re-create missing tables from WordPress Dashboard > Rank Math > Status & Tools > Database Tools.

Let us know if there are still any error logs after that.

Kate Van Druff
3 years, 4 months ago

Rank Math free

Hello Uzair,
Thanks so much for your reply! I have to tell you I am very non-technical with this stuff and I am not sure at all what you mean by recreate missing tables.

I believe I could change the setting regarding the Rank Math + WP Rocket if you can be very clear with what you need me to do. I do have both installed. Thank you!

Sincerely,
Kate

Kate Van Druff
3 years, 4 months ago

Rank Math free

Hi again Uzair,
Here is a screen shot from my WP-Rocket settings… This is how it was set up already – I did not change anything.
Thanks!
Kate

Michael Davis
3 years, 4 months ago

Rank Math pro

Hello,

To recreate your tables, please follow these steps:

1. Update to the latest version of Rank Math Free & PRO

2. Ensure that the Advanced Mode is selected:

3. Re-create tables by clicking WP Dashboard > Rank Math > Status & Tools > Database Tools and click the Re-create database Table button.

On the issue with WP Rocket sitemap, could you please try disabling the preload option then activate it again and resave the settings and check if the error still appears

Please let us know if that helps.

RankBot
3 years, 3 months ago

Hello,

Since we did not hear back from you for 15 days, we are assuming that you found the solution. We are closing this support ticket.

If you still need assistance or any other help, please feel free to open a new support ticket, and we will be more than happy to assist.

Thank you.

Viewing 9 replies - 1 through 9 (of 9 total)

The ticket ‘Traffic Loss after Rank Math Plugin 301 Redirects’ is closed to new replies.